Portrait of Lady Margaret Butts

Hans Holbein the Younger is most famous as the portraitist to the court of Henry VIII. Holbein’s sober yet quietly sensitive images found great favor during the artist’s sojourns in London from 1526 to 1538 and from 1532 until the end of his life. This portrait of Margaret Bacon, Lady Butts, is one of a pair with her husband, Sir William Butts, M.D., also on view in the Dutch room. Holbein first made a drawing of Lady Butts from life (Windsor Castle) and then traced it onto the panel to be worked up to the final work. William Butts (1485–1545) was the personal physician to Henry VIII, who knighted him in 1544.